Fresno Teacher Facing Child Pornography Charges

A Fresno Unified teacher is in jail facing serious child pornography charges. Police say they found the images on Terry Zane's computer.Terry Zane has taught in Fresno Unified for 17 years. For most of that time he's been a music teacher. Friday he's in the Fresno County Jail on 100 counts of child pornography.

57 year old Terry Zane will not be teaching when school starts in a few weeks. Fresno police say the longtime teacher had at least 1000 disturbing images on his home computer.

Jerry Dyer, Fresno Police Department: "This is one of those investigations I think is best described as sickening and shocking because of the content of what is on those computers. When you talk about children as young as five and six years of age having sexual acts with adults is simply shocking."

At this point, it is unclear whether Zane took any of the pictures himself or just collected them from other sources. Fresno Unified officials say Zane has no prior history and passed the employee screening when he was hired 17 years ago.

Michael Hansen, Fresno Unified Superintendent: "At this point, there's nothing in our employees file or in their past work history that would indicate anything of this nature going on. I think we are just as stunned as perhaps the entire community would be."

Investigators say so far there's no evidence to suggest the teacher engaged in any inappropriate behavior at school. He most recently taught music at both Wolters Elementary and Lawless School. Police say following his arrest Thursday, Zane made a confession to detectives.

"He admitted that the computers in question are his and that he is in fact responsible for the contents of his computers."

During a search of Zane's north Fresno home investigators took a laptop computer and 10 disks. All are now under forensic analysis.

Police say they were tipped off by a local computer repair shop who allegedly found the images while working on Zane's computer.

Now neighbors who live near Zane say he and his wife are outstanding people and they plan to support him during this time.